The same author disapproves of to after averse; another example of his hasty decision. The practice of good writers and speakers is almost wholly in favor of to, and this is good authority; the propriety of the English particles depending almost solely on their use, without any reference to Latin rules. Averse is an adjective, describing a certain state or quality of the mind, without regard to motion, and therefore averse from is as improper as contrary from, opposed from, or reluctant from. Indeed in the original sense of from, explained by Mr. Horne Tooke, as denoting beginning, averse from appears to be nonsense.
The following phrases are said to be faulty; previous to, antecedent to, with others of a similar nature. The criticism on these expressions must have been made on a very superficial view of the subject. In this sentence, "previous to the establishment of the new government, the resolutions of Congress could not be enforced by legal compulsory penalties;" previous refers to the word time or something equivalent implied, at the time previous, or during the time or period, previous to the establishment of the new government. This is the strict grammatical resolution of the phrase; and the usual correction, previously, is glaringly absurd; during the time previously to the establishment; into such wild errors are men led by a slight view of things, or by applying the principles of one language to the construction of another.[124]
"Agreeable to his promise, he sent me the papers;" here agreeable is correct; for it refers to the fact done; he sent me the papers, which sending was agreeable to his promise. In such cases, practice has often a better foundation than the criticisms which are designed to change it.
According is usually numbered among the prepositions; but most absurdly; it is always a participle, and has always a reference to some noun or member of a sentence. "According to his promise, he called on me last evening." Here according refers to the whole subsequent member of the sentence; "he called on me last evening, which (the whole of which facts) was according to his promise." No person pretends that "accordingly to his promise" is good English; yet the phrase is not more incorrect than "agreeably to his promise," or "previously to this event," which the modern critics and refiners of our language have recommended.
"Who do you speak to?" "Who did he marry?" are challenged as bad English; but whom do you speak to? was never used in speaking, as I can find, and if so, is hardly English at all. There is no doubt, in my mind, that the English who and the Latin qui, are the same word with mere variations of dialect. Who, in the Gothic or Teutonic, has always answered to the Latin nominative, qui; the dative cui, which was pronounced like qui, and the ablative quo; in the same manner as whose has answered to cujus, in all genders; whom to quem, quam, and what to quod. So that who did he speak to? Who did you go with? were probably as good English, in ancient times, as cui dixit? Cum quo ivisti? in Latin. Nay, it is more than probable that who was once wholly used in asking questions, even in the objective case; who did he marry? until some Latin student began to suspect it bad English, because not agreeable to the Latin rules. At any rate, whom do you speak to? is a corruption, and all the grammars that can be formed will not extend the use of the phrase beyond the walls of a college.
The foregoing criticisms will perhaps illustrate and confirm an assertion of Mr. Horne Tooke, that "Lowth has rejected much good English." I should go farther and assert that he has criticized away more phrases of good English, than he has corrected of bad. He has not only mistaken the true construction of many phrases, but he has rejected others that have been used generally by the English nation from the earliest times, and by arbitrary rules, substituted phrases that have been rarely, or never used at all. To detect such errors, and restrain the influence of such respectable names, in corrupting the true idiom of our tongue, I conceive to be the duty of every friend to American literature.
On examining the language, and comparing the practice of speaking among the yeomanry of this country, with the stile of Shakespear and Addison, I am constrained to declare that the people of America, in particular the English descendants, speak the most pure English now known in the world. There is hardly a foreign idiom in their language; by which I mean, a phrase that has not been used by the best English writers from the time of Chaucer. They retain a few obsolete words, which have been dropt by writers, probably from mere affectation, as those which are substituted are neither more melodious nor expressive. In many instances they retain correct phrases, instead of which the pretended refiners of the language have introduced those which are highly improper and absurd.
Let Englishmen take notice that when I speak of the American yeomanry, the latter are not to be compared to the illiterate peasantry of their own country. The yeomanry of this country consist of substantial independent freeholders, masters of their own persons and lords of their own soil. These men have considerable education. They not only learn to read, write and keep accounts; but a vast proportion of them read newspapers every week, and besides the Bible, which is found in all families, they read the best English sermons and treatises upon religion, ethics, geography and history; such as the works of Watts, Addison, Atterbury, Salmon, &c. In the eastern states, there are public schools sufficient to instruct every man's children, and most of the children are actually benefited by these institutions. The people of distant counties in England can hardly understand one another, so various are their dialects; but in the extent of twelve hundred miles in America, there are very few, I question whether a hundred words, except such as are used in employments wholly local, which are not universally intelligible.
But unless the rage for imitating foreign changes can be restrained, this agreeable and advantageous uniformity will be gradually destroyed. The standard writers abroad give us local practice, the momentary whims of the great, or their own arbitrary rules to direct our pronunciation; and we, the apes of fashion, submit to imitate any thing we hear and see. Sheridan has introduced or given sanction to more arbitrary and corrupt changes of pronunciation, within a few years, than had before taken place in a century; and in Perry's Dictionary, not to mention the errors in what he most arrogantly calls his "Only sure Guide to the English Tongue," there are whole pages in which there are scarcely two or three words marked for a just pronunciation. There is no Dictionary yet published in Great Britain, in which so many of the analogies of the language and the just rules of pronunciation are preserved, as in the common practice of the well informed Americans, who have never consulted any foreign standard. Nor is there any grammatical treatise, except Dr. Priestley's, which has explained the real idioms of the language, as they are found in Addison's works, and which remain to this day in the American practice of speaking.